Student-Centered Learning
Bones of the Past: Student Research in an Anthropology Lab
In the Reyniers Life Building on the north side of campus, Nancy O’Neill Associate Professor of Anthropology, Susan Guise Sheridan, and her assistants work extensively with two collections of human remains excavated from the Middle East. The Byzantine St. Stephen’s project analyzes more than 15,000 bones and fragments as part of an interdisciplinary effort to understand more about life in Jerusalem during the Byzantine era. The analysis of those remains is nearing an end, soon making the Bab edh-Dhra Early Bronze Age collection, excavated in Jordan, a focus of Sheridan’s study.
“Many schools with graduate programs don’t have collections of this magnitude,” says Sheridan, praising the collections.
"The Department of Anthropology does not house a graduate program, so it relies heavily on undergraduates to assist with research and participate in its field schools.
“Undergraduate students are so good here it’s easy to include them in research,” Sheridan says, noting the Department of Anthropology’s emphasis on experiential learning and undergraduate research.
This past summer, Sheridan was assisted by rising junior Alicia Cooper and two Notre Dame alumnae, Jaime Ullinger and Leslie Gregoricka. Cooper is a joint biology and anthropology major, while Ullinger and Gregoricka, doctoral students in anthropology, return to Sheridan’s lab during the summer to continue working with the exceptional skeletal collections.
The students claim the Department of Anthropology has provided them with an excellent foundation; students in the Department are encouraged to write grant proposals for their independent research projects and to present their work at professional conferences where they are often mistaken for graduate students.